A review by emmaaxtco
Dirt Music by Tim Winton

2.0

Gee, what to say really? Winton is a natural when it comes to description. He can prattle on for miles about this rock and that tree. But when it comes to the meat of a story, he likes to blow past the most interesting and provocative bits! What is with that??? To say this is a love story is laughable to me. Where's the love? How did it happen? Did I miss it? Winton drones on for 100s of pages about landscape, wildlife and paints an exhaustively clear picture of Western Australia. But at what point do his characters actually find this love? When it comes to actual plot, the long-winded Winton just brushes past in a veil of ambiguity. I buy into his characters, but not so much their motivations. The love triangle is convoluted and confusing. I hear Winton praised for poetry and description, and that I can agree with definitely. At least in Cloudstreet (a far superior novel in my humble opinion) I was invested in the story and in the characters. Dirt Music gave me a thin plot, characters I didn't care about, and a completely unsatisfying and unrealistic ending.